The White House press briefing room’s use of four Skype seats continued today as WLWT’s Courtis Fuller got the first question out of the gate. Fuller, who is an anchor at the Cincinnati NBC station, asked about the city’s decision to become a sanctuary city will adversely affect it, in terms of federal funding.
“This order is about two things,” Spicer said. “1) keeping our cites safe and 2) respecting the hard-earned tax payers who send their money to the federal government. The president is going to do everything he can within the scope of the executive order to make sure cities who don’t comply with it don’t get federal government funding without compliance with the executive order. I think down in Florida they understand the importance of this order and we hope Cincinnati follow their lead an comply with that.”
Norma Garcia anchor at Telemundo’s Dallas station KXTX got the second Skype seat question. She asked about sanctuary cities but in the broader sense about whether the president is committed to comprehensive immigration reform. “When you talk about a comprehensive approach, he has talked about building a wall, about making sure we go after criminals in this country and walking through the process and addressing DACA. No question on the security side and reforming the current immigration system that is so clearly broken. To your question about the timeline, he is already enacting several pieces and he is going to work with congress to get further down the road.”
The third Skype seat question came from Josh Smith anchor at WJHL in Johnson City, TN. “Thanks so much for taking questions from journalists covering local news. WJHL serves Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. That is coal country,” said Smith, who asked about whether Trump would make good on his campaign promise of bringing back coal jobs.
Adriana Cohen, a radio host and columnist for the Boston Herald, got the fourth question. She too asked about sanctuary cities.